Preface ix 2003 Remarks on Being Named President of Duke University 1 2004 Freshman Convocation: Authoring a Community 5 Graduate and Professional Convocation: The Virtues and Limits of Specialization 12 Inaugural Address: More Day to Dawn 19 Remarks at the Induction Ceremony of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Literature as Life 29 2005 Baccalaureate: On Education and Empowerment 32 Founders' Day Address: On Founding as a Continuous Labor 37 Faculty Address: Financial Aid, the Problem-centric University 44 2006 Preface to the University Strategic Plan, Making A Difference: Duke and the Changing Landscape: A Planning Prologue 53 2007 Commencement Address at Fisk University 60 Fresman Convocation: The Ethic of Engagement 64 Lessons of Lacrosse 71 2008 Baccalaureate: Frolics and Detours 75 2009 Baccalaureate: Advancing in a Recession 80 In Memoriam: John Hope Franklin 85 2010 Faculty Address: The University and the Financial Downturn 88 Baccalaureate: Walk Ten Thousand Miles, Read Ten Thousand Books 98 2011 Faculty Address: Budgets, International Opportunities, the Humanities 103 In Memoriam: Reynolds Price 113 Freshman Convocation: On the Use of New Freedoms 115 John Tyler Caldwell Lecture on the Humanities: The Fire That Never Goes Out 119 2012 In Memoriam: Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans 127 Faculty Address: Duke and Race 130 Baccalaureate: Repairing the Broken World 139 2013 Baccalaureate: Connecting and Disconnecting 144 Interview with Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report 148 Freshman Convocation: Receive, Connect, Engage 153 Remarks at the Opening of the Center on Sexual and Gender Diversity 157 Presidential Address, The College Board Forum: The Value Debate in Higher Education 161 2014 Lecture at Tsinghua University, Beijing: Interconnected Knowledge and the Twenty-First-Century University 172 Faculty Address; Leadership Transitions, Rebuilding the Campus, the Role of Philanthropy 183 Commencement Address at Miami Dade College: Opportunity Changes Everything 194 Freshman Convocation: On Comfort True and False 201 2015 Faculty Address: Chocies That Made Duke—Medicine, Athletics, Durham 205 Remarks at a Community Forum on a Racial Incident 216 Freshman Convocation: Constructing Duke 220 Keynote Address, Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the National Endowment for the Humanties: On the Fate and Fortunes of Public Goods 225 2016 Baccalaureate: I Learn by Going Where I Have to Go 237 Freshman Convocation: Citizens of Duke 242 Index 247

"President Brodhead's passion, commitment, and leadership have helped make Duke University a great place to learn and grow. The wisdom he shares in this book is valuable to all those dedicated to education, service, and leadership. It was an honor to be on his team!" — Coach Mike Krzyzewski

“Speaking of Duke is a remarkable collection of speeches offering rare and valuable insight into the thinking of a university president. While addressing key issues and challenges facing American higher education and our society, Richard H. Brodhead also tells Duke’s story with eloquence and authenticity, offering inspiration for both current and future academic leaders.” — Freeman A. Hrabowski III, President of The University of Maryland, Baltimore County

"Only someone who loves letters could write and speak as Richard H. Brodhead does. This is about his journey at Duke but it is no ordinary collection of lectures to young people or statements about the role of the university. He tackles some of the toughest questions facing American higher education, but in a way that connects the big idea to a real person. He writes for the reader. You'll want to read this curled up in front of a fire.” — Judy Woodruff

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Description

Over the course of his thirteen years as president of Duke University, Richard H. Brodhead spoke at numerous university ceremonies, community forums, and faculty meetings, and even appeared on The Colbert Report. Speaking of Duke collects dozens of these speeches, in which Brodhead speaks both to the special character and history of Duke University and to the general state of higher education.

In these essays, Brodhead shows a university thinking its way forward through challenges all institutes of higher education have faced in the twenty-first century, including an expanding global horizon, an economic downturn that has left a diminished sense of opportunity and a shaken faith in the value of liberal arts education, and pressure to think more deeply about issues of equity and inclusion. His audiences range from newly arrived freshmen and new graduates—both facing uncertainty about how to build their future lives—to seasoned faculty members. On other occasions, he makes the case to the general public for the enduring importance of the humanities.

What results is a portrait of Duke University in its modern chapter and the social and political climate that it shapes and is shaped by. While these speeches were given on official occasions, they are not impersonal official pronouncements; they are often quite personal and written with grace, humor, and an unwavering belief in the power of education to shape a changing world for the better.

Brodhead notes that it is an underappreciated fact that a great deal of the exercise of power by a university leader is done through speaking: by articulating the aspirations of the school and the reasons for its choices, and by voicing the shared sense of mission that gives a learning community its reality. Speaking of Duke accomplishes each of those and demonstrates Brodhead's conviction that higher education is more valuable now than ever.

About The Author(s)

Richard H. Brodhead was the president of Duke University from 2004 to 2017 and served as the William Preston Few Professor of English. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He previously served as the dean of Yale College from 1993 to 2004 and as the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English at Yale University. He is the recipient of several awards, including four honorary degrees. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, he cochaired its national Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. A scholar of nineteenth-century American literature, Brodhead is the author of several books, including The Good of This Place: Values and Challenges in College Education and Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America, and the editor of many others, including The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt and The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales, both also published by Duke University Press.